7th April is designated as the ‘World Health Day’ which is celebrated by the 191 member countries of the World Health Organisation in order to lay emphasis on the significant issues in public health of worldwide concern. Every year this global campaign is celebrated on the 7th April to commemorate the founding of the WHO in 1948. Each year a theme is chosen for the World Health Day that highlights a priority area of concern for the WHO. The theme for the year 2014 is ‘Vector-borne diseases’.
Listed below are a few objectives of celebrating World Health Day yearly:
- To promote self-care among people.
- To motivate the worldwide health authorities to make their own efforts in creating the healthy environments in their country.
- To protect families living in the disease vulnerable areas.
- To teach travellers and send them messages about how to get protected from the vector-borne diseases while travelling.
Basically, this day is observed each year to give every individual an opportunity to take part in a single health challenge and urges people to join in the global celebration & take action in promoting health and well-being. Plenty of events related to the particular theme are organised both at International and National level by the WHO. Besides this, various organisations actively participate and highlight their activities & supports through the media reports by means of press releases etc. Moreover, the health authorities belonging to different countries take part in the celebration and take pledge to support the health related issues prevailing across the world. Debates, art exhibitions, essay writing competitions, award ceremonies etc. are organised in order to fulfill the aim of the World Health Day.
Tips to celebrate World Health Day:
- Tell your children the significance of celebrating World Health Day.
- Narrate the importance of a healthy lifestyle to your children by quoting the age-old famous proverb ‘Health is Wealth’.
- Inculcate in your children healthy habits viz. taking regular bath, wearing clean clothes, drinking clean water, washing hands before and after meals, covering the dustbins with lids to avoid breeding of flies & mosquitoes etc.
- Place two huge sized bins in your locality one green bin for the waste which can be recycled by nature i.e. which gets decomposed naturally and the other blue bin for wastes such as cans, bottles, glass, paper etc. which can be recycled.
- Encourage your children to make posters and slogans on World Health Day.
- Together with your children spread awareness amongst the general masses.
- Involve your children and organise a skit to highlight upon the importance of clean surroundings whether inside or outside the house and never let the water stagnate anywhere near or in your surroundings.
- Tell your children to wear full-sleeves clothes so as to minimize exposed skin surface especially after dark.
- Strictly discourage your children to swim in fresh water.
- Organise a health cum immunization camp in your locality so as to control the chronic ailments such as tetanus, polio etc.
Use the above mentioned tips to generate awareness about establishing healthy and disease-free environment.
